The adventure takes players from a town devastated by an unexpected flood, through a drowned land where nature is turned upside down and desperate families cling to the roofs of their ruined homes, hiding from the monstrous products of a disordered world, through the strange tomb of an ancient race, to a profundal zone, hidden for millennia and now exposed, and finally to the Observatory itself, an eerie abandoned treasure palace, where they will encounter a pale and unexpected terror which will seek to claim their lives.

The adventure is suitable for a lucky mid-range party, a stupid high-level party or an exceedingly clever low level party. It is difficult, with a meaningful possibility of character death. Should you find them, and defeat their guardians, the treasures of an ancient culture will be yours.

At the final point of the Observatory is a glimpse of another world.

Deep Carbon Observatory is about 90 pages long, 20,000 words with four maps and extensive artwork by Scrap Princess.

Stats are minimal and given for LOTFP but should be easily transferable into any simple D&D system.

I bought this with the Relief Bundle, and I see it's for D&D, but which edition?

Jamie PSeptember 21, 2017 11:43 pm UTC

It's for the older editions (e.g. B/X, the 1981 Basic game) and their retro clones (e.g. Basic Fantasy RPG, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Whitehack etc.), most of which can be obtained for free. I expect it also works well enough with 5e, the stat blocks are all simple enough.

This is a review based on running DCO. DCO turns the modern adventure design paradigm on it's head- where telling rather than showing is the norm, and word count and bloat buries what the "core idea" or concept so deep that the running adven [...]

Deep Carbon Observatory is very rich on atmosphere. So much so that "the dungeon" of the adventure only sets up a slight portion of the adventure. Combat definitely takes a back seat in this adventure, but this isn't to say that it is non-e [...]

I really like the morally tough decisions the party has to make. It also contains a lot of little really clever weird elements. The only negative pint are the maps, which are atmosspheric, but not user friendly. [...]

I loved this. Its totally dark full of Weirdness and a little scary. It will be a little bit of a challenge to DM, but I am excited to try. It's pretty harsh though, so fair warning. I will be toning down the opposition a little or it will [...]

In the typical LotFP fashion, the "winning" scenario is damn near impossible, the adventure contains numerous devices which screw player characters royally, and is grimdark to a fault, replacing wit and imagination with tragedy and cruel joke [...]

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